News

In a nutshell: The European Commission filed an action against the EDPS, published a report on the State of the Digital Decade, a study on geoblocking, a risk assessment report on cyber resilience on EU’s telecommunications and electricity sectors, and opened consultations on Digital Identity Wallets, EU-US Data Privacy Framework and guidelines on the protection of minors under the DSA. European Commission’s president-elect von der Leyen published Political guidelines for the upcoming Commission mandate, CPC Network started an action against Meta’s ‘pay or consent’ model. Europol published the IOCTA report. United Nations’ Ad Hoc Committee finalised the Convention against Cybercrime.

This summer I had the chance to attend two Internet Governance (IG) events, namely the European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG) and the European Summer School on Internet Governance (EuroSSIG). While both events differed in the format and to some extent in content, the thread connecting both events was the ongoing global processes, such as the Global Digital Compact (GDC) and the anticipation of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+20) that are expected to bring changes and new challenges to IG.

Brussels, 5 August 2024 — CENTR, the association of European country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registries, is excited to announce the public release of the code for its Domain Crawler Project. This initiative aims to enhance transparency and foster innovation within the domain name landscape across Europe.

CENTR is excited to announce a significant update to its data platform, CENTRstats. The backend of CENTRstats has been upgraded from the old web.py framework to a more robust and professional PHP-based CMS. This transition brings enhanced functionalities for administrators and streamlines various processes, ensuring that the data is more accessible and manageable.

CENTR has issued a Board statement to provided feedback to the European Commission’s Draft implementing regulation of the NIS 2 Directive.

We are looking for an experienced, enthusiastic, and detail-oriented Office Manager to join our small team and serve our international and multilingual membership. We would like our new team member to start between September and November 2024. 

In a nutshell: The Hungarian Presidency set its priorities for the Council of the EU, ahead of its term starting from 1 July. The Belgian Presidency published a progress report on the FiDA and insolvency directives reform. The Council of the EU reached an agreement on a common position regarding GDPR enforcement reform. FRA issued a report about the experiences of data protection authorities. The European Commission published a draft implementing act on the NIS 2 Directive. G7 leaders adopted the Apulia communiqué, including its political priorities for cybersecurity. The High-Level Group on Access to Data for Effective Law Enforcement published recommendations. European citizens elected their representatives in the European Parliament for 2024-2029.

Last week I had the pleasure to attend and contribute to Baltic Domain Days, kindly hosted by DOMREG in Vilnius. Baltic Domain Days is an event that brings together the key domain name actors of the Baltic region and beyond, keeping a pulse on the trends that affect .lt, .lv and .ee registries and the overall domain name ecosystem in the Baltic states. This year's edition was hosted by .lt registry in the beautiful Old Town of Vilnius.

From May 28th to May 31st, the CENTR Community gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark, for its 13th Jamboree. The Jamboree is the annual meeting where the whole European ccTLD community comes together. Unlike most CENTR meetings that are typically structured around the 6 CENTR Working Groups (e.g., Legal, R&D, or Marketing), the Jamboree focuses on broader topics and facilitates conversations between different corners of the CENTR ecosystem. This year was special as, for the first time, we welcomed external participants who actively contributed to the program. With 250 in-person attendees and 60 joining online, this year’s edition was the largest CENTR meeting ever.

In a nutshell: The Council of the EU approved its conclusions on the Future of EU Digital Policy, to which several EU countries reacted with their own proposal. The Council of the EU approved its conclusions on the Future of Cybersecurity. The Dutch government published a non-paper on effective EU cybersecurity legislation. The European Commission took stock of the implementation of the EU Security Union Strategy. The European Data Protection Board issued a statement on the Financial Data Access proposal. The Court of justice of the EU ruled on public authorities’ access to identity data and IP addresses. The Council of the EU formally adopted the Artificial Intelligence Act. The Council of Europe adopted an international treaty on Artificial Intelligence.